Mitch64

My Mom always loved that Lisa and Kim "dressed to the nines" all the time! How many miles does busybody Lisa have on her car and when does she run her multitude of businesses? I love the early days of Marland here...(though its a bit clunky to have Bob mention to Lyla that they have a new set.) He was all pissy as he had to work with HBS (nothing against her, she just wasn't Colin) which is another example of his self indulgence.. I loved her when she first came on and she was fighting Alex, formed an alliance with Roger, was tricked by Van to believe Henry was her dad...then the court battle and her fighting Roger (she had a great line reading, preggers with Roger's kid she told him...."You will NEVER see this child") prophetic as she lost it but full of steel.....and then they threw her at Buzz and she followed all of Buzz's women as being sacrificed to standing there and mooning over him. They were fired I think and they brought in a slew of nobodies to write (one was an ex AMC writer) and then there was a strike and then more nobodies and then Bunim came in as producer and hired them back..but your right, you never hear anything about that time which would be interesting. I think they introduced James to be more like Alan Spaulding and at first he was mysterious and grey but then he did become a one note villain which was bad...Herrar was hot in the day he could have been written more gothic...(like why would dumb Dee fall for him when all he did was rub his hands together contemplating his next ridiculous scheme to torture Barbara?) Internation intrique should never been in Oakdale IL. making James a Swedish Prince was...just dumb. I wonder since Lisa Loring was so...limited as an actress Margo got some of her "Bad Girl" sleeping with a married guy action.

I never understood his fascination with Buzz or the Coopers but damn can that guy write great dialogue. ...on some Twitter (X) post I mentioned that GL at that time...(Curlee era...BevAlex/ Roger/Mindy everything else going on with everyone...back when it was an ensemble and not Reva eats the show alive) was as good as anything going on in primetime and he liked it and I was dorkily Do you have a link to the interview?

Believe it or not...Reva's diva wandering around the country side in her wedding dress (with no one gawky at this big blonde bride.."Frank is that THAT SHAYNE woman??? White????") was shot in Peacock. It is actually a lovely spot so I just think Wheeler and Co. looked for the crappiest places to shoot. I have no idea where Quint and Nola's wedding shoot was...but I love the church they used for exteriors and I think they used that in the ending shot of the opening for a bit. The couch clip reminded me how much funny Billy and Van were at first..I have no idea why they made her a frumpy boring wife as soon as they got married. The opening shot also has the infamous scene of Phillip watching Mindy do yoga...urban legend is that GA was pulling his leg up as he had a hard on.

Excuse me...Mr. Tony Reardon's Hiiii-YAAAA is a classic! I hated the 85- to whatever cheap ass opening! I like it too..it feels like someone wrapped a blanket around me for some reason, probably because I was a kid and would hear it on Christmas and summer vacations in the next room, with my Mom not paying attention to what I was doing!

I agree...but what are you going to do when you have nutball fan cases who love Juzz? Bena??? I thought RN and Fiona had great chemistry and imagine Reva having to go toe to toe with a hottie who aint nuts? As I said, Buzz was fun as a conman that everyone thought was a weirdo..he would have made a better character on Edge of Night actually. Sorry, more of a GL discussion here.

LOL..I was actually watching these scenes and remembering that I thought he was sexy back then and still do when I rewatch. (maybe he always needed the facial hair...) but his Tom is a great combo of Bob (idealist, upright and defending the ones he loves) and Lisa (unconventional, sexual, and willing to bend a rule to get what he wants.) I will say he was yelly, OTT and "LOOK at me..." on Day 1 of GL. I think as Marcy Walker said, his acting could be self indulgent and I think his ego, combined with JFP's propping, and one of the writers propping of Buzz (he saw him as his own dad...) the industry delusion that he was the BEST, all made him untouchable and out of place in SF...(though I did like him when he first came on and everyone thought he was bizarre and he was a con artist...) I think on ATWT he was constrained by the character, the writing and the vets who surrounded him (plus Colin who gave as good as she got...) ON GL it was as if they wrote a scene ( Buzz yells, flaps his arms and the rest of the characters stand there and take it.) That's actually when I started to, at least tolerate him (as I knew he wasn't going anwhere...) Once Bruce Barry told him to settle it down, and Deas got butt hurt over that....his quiter and almost sadder Buzz made sense (he was a guy who abandoned his family and really was as selfish a prick as Alan...) Buzz seemed tired world weary but still in it because of his family. That made him a better fit in SF then...flapping arms and running around the Spaulding mansion set while poor Fiona had to stand there and watch.

Agreed...I think Roger being written out hastened her exit but she would have been gone..she did not work with Rauch's thing...she was a bad girl but Poser always gave Amanda an bravado that she was not crazy like Annie or neurotic like Dinah...Rauch also bet that Amanda could replace Alex but that didn't work. As I said, I loved Poser and she did well with the dumb Malibu Madame...the slooow drawn out time between Laibson and Rauch taking over and the interim writers making her Brandon's kid, which then was dropped (that could have worked with the right writing and Alex still there...Amanda..who always did not seem to fit in the Spaulding dynamic....as a Spaulding but yet, not really accepted as one...) I think she could have really worked as a smart amoral woman not letting anyone screw her over and flagrant with her sexuality...kind of like Raven on Edge of Night who had a more sterotypical male attitude on sex "Hey, it was fun but that doesn't mean we are getting married or even exclusive." Plus she had one of my favorite lines..pre clone...Josh attacks Alan, with overacting RN acting and overacting RR in the lab..Amanda is walking around checking things out, not concerned in the least when Alan says, "Amanda..he tried to KILL me!!" and Poser barley acknowledges this and underplays it with a "Who HASNT???"

Oh..that was..pretty bad!!! Who was trying to kill boring Eve? Van was jumping on hot..but obviously gay Ben...glam Van was desperate and jealous of wet rag Eve?Shouldn't Ben be home protecting his wife? I like what you say, Jennifer and Amanda are really wet rags themselves...I know people on here like Cullen as Amanda, but I lurve Poser's A..even if it made no sense that she was deaged at least a decade and her Malibu Madame thing was really bad. I can see Amanda moving to Cali and really letting her repression go...and becoming Vixen Amanda...(kinda like closeted guys who BURST out of the closet...)

Ha..the bars are a good analogy....I think that is why I always stuck with GL even during more tedious times...it was warm and energetic and messy (at its best.) Something that made Marland...Marland was that he made the Reardon's an Irish Blue Collar family..protestant...(Bea talks about having Minister something or other marry Nola and Floyd....) .but Long made them Catholic. I do agree that Long was great at writing the Reardons..that is why I don't understand the abrupt abondoment of them in 84/85. I also agree that Marland improves what he inherits, but then its back to cold analytical time...I thought it first year on ATWT was his best...it still had some of the campy messiness of the show he inherited but he put polish, and structure to it, while going back to the core.

That cracked me up..poor hottie Melinda...."Dee?" and viewers were supposed to think this was sexy? To add injury to insult...Melinda dies coming on to Brad on a boat, as she is drunk and jumps overboard!

Well since you asked my Christmas gift to you is.... HATED at all times: Buzz (wins the award..sorry, did not drink the soap industry Kool Aid that Deas was the BEST actor ever...yelling, flapping arms, spitting and as Marcy Walker said "self-indulgent" scene stealing does not a great actor make...and Buzz was a misogynistic ass most times and didn't fit in SF.) Super Duper Coopers- they were fine when it was just Harley and Frank, but when it was the only intact family all patting themselves on the back on how "RIGHT" they were..nah. Fairy Tale Island-Rassie..LW just came off as shrill sometimes...but I did start to like her with Danny and then..that ended so she jumped in the sack with the guy who tried to kill her sister and her nephew. Hated/LIked Harley-liked her as the tough "river rat" Nola knock off she was when first introduced....liked her okay as a more mature everywoman....HATED her during Kriezman's Love Goddess and Ehlers personal unhappiness came out and made Harley shrill and annoying. Reva-sometimes loved original recipe Reva (who could hate a drama queen wandering the country side in a big ass wedding dress after her failed ceremony...loved her and H.B. together..shouldnt have worked but did...) HATE Post Resurrection Reva and especially Rauchie making her at the middle aged love goddess when we could all clearly see that time had past...hated her eating story so they had to reach in their asses to come up with something to keep Zimmer's mug on my screen everyday. Marj's Alex-Marj was a victim of the writing and I felt she never GOT Alex..but sometimes she could be quite good...(Alex facing off with Faux Annie in the Spaulding Attic) the first few weeks she took over for Joan/Alex and they were still writing Alex as smart and powerful..and sometimes she was one of JFP's over the top scenery chewers on crack...popping eyes, hissing, stuttering...(my favorite scene so bad its good Roger convinces Alex the snake that bit her is venomous...she is on top of the Spaulding limo while Roger sucks the venom out..and her alternately schreicking and writing in semeiotic pleasure...so weird..) Jonathon-again, I did not drink the soap industry Kook Aid...TP's yelling, scenery chewing and attempts at scene stealing (no one could ever top the character in a scene TP would put in a laugh like Jonathon was NEVER ever going to loose.) TP was good as Reva's spawn from hell...sociopathic oddball, but romantic antihero...no...and I think TP left at the best time..) I also thought Matt, Frank, Rusty, Gus... all the nonentities Wheeler brought on, are just boring and useless. Oh, and I thought Otalia was boring...put sexy CC with someone better then a Kreizman boring creation. From my home to yours Donna for a Happy New Year! Uh, okay....

Yes, I was just Mitch but when you had to be authenticated it would not take that handle so I had to add in a number. Marah as the stalker would have been great...she would have YEARS of resentment towards Reva disappearing and causing strife and trauma in their lives. She would be a daddy's girl that would see what Reva has done to turn Josh inside and out and I never accepted the Rauch/E & B plot where Marah all of a sudden turned on "Mommy Annie" when the [!@#$%^&*] hit the fan..I would have had her secretly understanding Reva pushing Annie over the edge. But yea, McKeon couldn't act that out. I liked Jonathon and Tammy as a sicko dysfunctional thing....Tammy was always WAY too blond suburbany for a girl whose formative years were spent with her Mommy stripping so I could see her having a masochistic relationship with him out of lack of self esteem. But as soon as they were Twu Wuv I lost interest. In that scene Pelphery was definitely leaning into a sexual vibe deliberately trying to turn Sandathon on...I imagine it must have really freaked TPTB out. Which leads to my plot, which I think was based on those tattoos that Jeffie, Sandy and Jonathon had that was never explained...I can't remember, maybe they were call boys with Jeffie as their pimp..Jonathon being part of a sexual scam operation with his daddy's look alike as the head of it would have been just the kind of stuff I think Pelphery would like to play out..I think he was bored with the generic bad boy with the heart of gold, so he starting chewing that damn scenery...Anyway .anything to really get the Brad Cole cows upset and get him off my screen.

Timing is off here a bit....Carmen went into a coma when Bill tackled her as she was pulling a gun (yet again) on Chele at the Bauer house...Carmen hit her head on a step and she was carted off and everyone was like....so do we order a pizza or go out, no one gave a damn. That was on New Year's Eve. Eddie and Liv worked quite nicely with the Spaulding's, but Collin's sexy Alex worked better with him then Marj's whatever the hell she was doing with Alex. (though she did quite well as Alex before Weston took over.) I remember the eye popping he did all the time. He was cute but not interesting but I saw him on a commercial and he aged into a very handsome man. He had chemistry with one person, Pelphery and there was one scene where TP was on top of him in a hospital bed taunting him and thought the reveal would be that Sandy was Joanthon "experimented" which made sense as TP gave Jonathon a vibe where he would do anyone as long as he could manipulate them with sex. Taggert/Culliton always intended the stalker to be Jonathon but didn't Weston change that to make it Alex...(picking up from a real stalker who was caught..) to stop world class journalist Reva from discovering Gus was Alan's kid with that stupid nun...(and yes, Gus was supposed to be either Alan or Ed's kid with Rita.) which led to her drugging Alan (Mac n' Cheese Alan) which JLH admitted they made him Alan's kid as they liked the way RR and RPG kidded around with each other backstage...(huh???) and then led to Alex being a drug lord so they totally butchered Alex. Oh I remember the days where a Rassie fan got hit by a car crossing a street she was so upset about Richie dying, and then the Manny's sending LW a stuffed big bird doll..again, I lay it all on MADD's feet that she stuck to the formula to appease those fruitcakes.

I agree, this was the last, best attempt to save GL...(Taggart/Culliton) and Weston and Conboy put the final nail in. I would say MADD, who was supported Rauch in all his interference and excess, and put Weston and Conboy in place. She was the final say at P & G and she had a vision of GL which was not consistent with what the show was (gloss and glamour and ROMANCE all the time...) The P & G shows were not ABC shows and she could never get that out of her head. Someone mentioned that McTavish had an axe to grind with GL...what was it? I know she got her start there so she should have been excited to be back. I can believe it, the way she wrote Nola was terrible (Nola, sad and lonely???) and she basically shat on Java (and I am not their biggest fan.) Rick screws what his basically his uncle's wife, and he grew up for years thinking it was his sister, and its all for shits and giggles????

No they were out in the open weren't they? What I meant was...Alex did not have to spend her soap after life with Buzz like Lillian did.

No need to bow down to the hours upon hours I spent in my misspent life watching this show! But yea...join me in the hating on Buzz Cooper table anytime! Poor Lillian, she never did have any taste....remember when she was dating Hawk???? But at least Alex, despite her complete character assasination under Conboy, managed to dodge the Buzz bullet....

I wish they had brought Van's edge back after her dumb coming back from the dead storyline...I hated her kowtowing to Billy and sighing over Matt. Maeve could play a cold a** b*tch quite well.

Agreed..he always hated everything and tore it to shreds..which is probably why he was popular! Anyway, did Lisa ever mention "Eve" when Marland wrote the Eldridge's back in? I think it is cool he reached that far back (thought I wish he would have gone an even more soapy route, as he originally was going to, and bring back "Chuck" from the dead...) though it was kind of typical Marland washed out...(Scott should have been a real villain and the mother should have been mean to Lisa, instead of going to her birthday party.)

Well, he is still annoying...(every time little Paul was in danger I was hoping it would take him out...) and why does he not have a shirt on?

Lucci is a smart cookie, she got more publicity off of never winning her daytime Emmy then she would have a second string role on a quickly canceled sitcom. Back in the day there were no Desperate Housewives type shows which mixed campy comedy with more serious moments and as she was not cut out for a sitcom or a serious drama, she was smart enough to stay.

The things you mentioned above were the things that ruined PASSIONS. I actually like it for a bit when I would watch it once in a while when I came home from work to each lunch...somedays it was fresh and funny and a riff on soaps when it first started and was more good humored..(at Christmas when Tabitha tried to get Santa drunk to screw her...or when they had pop up bubbles to have Tabby warn the young viewers not to do whatever ridiculous thing she and Timmy were up to..."NBC's lawyers would like me to tell you not to drive a motorcycle at midnight without a helmet, but I told them how would you be able to see my face...") but I never became invested in it..it was just a collection of skits tied loosely around a really bad soap opera. But then I tuned in years later and there was a lot of rape and serial killing and I missed the days of Tabby and Timmy fighting their "Friends in the basement," It just got mean spirited and I think mirrored JER's state of mind.

She did that to GL too..besides the infamous Brent/Marion (killing yet another Mom and making jokes about it..making a dumb girl believe she is HIV positive) Roger and Holly lost all their nuance and he became EVIL (even wanting to drug Dinah and murder her) Amanda an amoral madame, Josh hating Reva when she returned, AM resenting Phillip when he returned..Phillip thinking anyone in his family, including Alex, who always supported him, could frame him...and just generally all connections between the interconnected families of GL were downplayed...Bridget stopped being involved with Uncle Ed, never talked to Chele, Chele called Nola her aunt "Mrs. Chamberlin" and the same with Vanessa, her Mom's best friend..hell, McTavish even made Nola, a manic depressed loser! That is why I never understood why and how she screwed herself and the show later...she saw what worked and what was successful..why ruin it? Id love to see what they had to say, she seems such an odd person/writer.

Who knows, but Kreizman sure was kissing Harley/Ehlers ass in the writing...when he wasn't blowing Jonathon/Pelphery in the writing. Who was her almost brother? Jim Lemay, I have no idea...was Bridget even mentioned when NotDylan came back? And Susan wasn't nearly as bad as Leah, suddenly being older then her older brother, which made a hash out of the timeline..so Rick did not get drunk and sleep with Harley after Abby left him, he screwed her when he was married to Mel???? Did Leah find some of Cleva's growth serum laying around? Did anyone give a damn about anything at the end? God how I would love to see Chappell and Zimmer having a physical cat fight over a GL prop!!! My money's on Kimmer!

Ha..not to mention...de-aged Susan (such a vanity cast for Ehlers) and her boyfriend, the hit guy Grady (?) looked like they should be on the street corner dealing meth. Totally agree. I LOVED Collins as Alex...she brought back the humor, the determination, the sly put downs, the coolness of Bev..and also the warmth Bev had..(her Alex was gentle with her friends and younger people..well, younger people who didn't cross her...) The thing I noticed about Marj is that her Alex is totally and completely unpleasant..(oddly enough she reminds me of recast Dick Sargent on Bewitched..who seemed to determined to make the character unlikeable at all times.) It seems odd to see Ed, Ross, Rick, Lillian or anyone just talk to her as "Alex" when you would run the other way if you saw her shrieking, huffing self coming. I thought Joan gave Alex her power back (though that was also the writing) while sprinkling in sultriness that Bev did not have. MADD was happy with her, what she was not happy with is her paycheck and that the ratings didn't jump...hence they brought back Marj who was cheap. Also Rauchie left and he knew how to handle an old style diva (by all accounts the cast loved Joan, but she is a STAR!) It wasn't her fault that Alex had so much airtime at a time that Rauch was fighting Taggert and changing scripts right before filming..no one but a seasoned soap pro would be able to handle that. Yes, the budget was bad enough with Rauch, but Conboy totally f*cked it up...if they had done the move a few years earlier, and moved the sets to some other place and filmed as usual all would have been good. Again, blame MADD for not being a strategic thinker and biding time before she could grab her golden parachute.

I have no idea..I just heard that some people were offered it (could have been more of the usual suspects) and no one wanted it..due to PG and network interference...the pay...and everyone knew GL was going to be cancelled. I will take JLH over Kreizman anyway..she has written a few L & Os and Kreizman was writing for pro wrestling for a while and the crap show Days...well, nuff said. As much as I don't agree with her on many things (the Cooper family is her comfort family..yuk) she got GL and she was responsible for writing the returns correctly and the great scene with Ed and Lillian at Mo's grave..which came about 10 years too late but....I know she was one of GA's favorite writers. Born is only a few years younger then Raines..and at least Alan would have been sexy again...but I think he would make a better Kyle Sampson recast..he always seemed for "feral" under his business suits. But I do agree, both Alan and Alex should have never been recast..I get that they needed to recast Bev as she left abruptly but it should have been a temp recast or JFP should have begged Bev to come back just to wrap things up...(i.e. make peace with Nick and Mindy..) Bring back a recast Amanda (sorry, Cullen was a washed out bore) or have Van run Spaulding...then AM...then Phillip. Alan should have never been recast but they also kept RR around too long where his snidely whiplash antics were a bore...Alan should have died years ago and the new generation could have taken over and fought it out.